


Blue On Black

by Duck_Life



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demonic Possession, Fluff and Angst, Horror, M/M, Possessed Cas, Post Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t think you understand,” says the demon possessing Castiel. “How many times have these hands put you together? How hard do you think it can be for them to tear you apart?” Oneshot. Please R&R!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue On Black

It’s a trick Dean got from Bobby- spike all the beer with just a dash of holy water, catch any demon parading around as one of your drinking buddies. He’d just, for some reason, always expected it to be a possessed Sam or Garth spewing out the purified beer all over the kitchen floor, not a freshly human Cas still grubby from the road.

“Cas?” he says, voice tense as he leans over to look the other man in the eye as the choking stills, all the while telling himself _not Cas, not Cas_.

“No, it’s- it’s me, I swear,” Cas says, voice raw from the holy water. “But it’s, it’s because I fell. Fallen angels have the same reaction to holy water as demons, it’s…” Frazzled, Dean doesn’t know if this is true or not, doesn’t know if he believes it, but even as he’s deciding, Cas is looking up at him, nervous, genuine as always. “Dean, I promise,” he adds on while Dean reaches inside his jacket for a flask of more holy water. “It’s me. You _know_ me.”

It’s enough for Dean to hesitate, to hesitate and really _look_ at Cas, hair dusted with dew from the grass he’d landed in hours ago, bags under his eyes, looking small and worried. He hesitates, and that’s when Cas swings out an arm and delivers an elbow to his temple, shoving Dean, unconscious, to the floor.

“Should’ve closed the gates to Hell when you had the chance, moron.”

* * *

Dean wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later in a dark room, arms fastened above him by what feels like cool metal. For a second, he’s hoping it’s a nightmare, but then the disorientation clears away and he remembers Cas ( _not Cas, not Cas_ ) in the kitchen, and then he recognizes where he is.

The dungeon in the bunker is cold, the stone wall behind him rough against his shirtless back. His wrists are in shackles, his ankles are bolted to the floor, and not-Cas stands silhouetted in the doorframe, his venomous grin glinting in the darkness.

“Shackles? Kinky.”

“There’s the renowned Winchester wit I’ve heard so much about.” The demon stretches, flexing Castiel’s long muscles. “Nice in here,” he says, like he’s commenting on a particularly steamy sauna.

“Get out of him.” Dean’s furious and scared but hardly surprised. Figures that on Cas’s first day human, he’d get jumped by one of Hell’s hitchhikers.

“Oh, no,” the demon answers, his black eyes sliding shut. “All this pain and doubt he’s got roiling around in here, it’s _delicious_.” He cracks Cas’s neck, his knuckles, like he’s adjusting a glove. “Years I’ve been waiting for the famous Dean Winchester to be attacked by his precious Castiel, and now finally I don’t have to worry about cramming inside an angel consciousness to get it done.”

“You wanna see Cas beating the shit outta me, you missed your chance,” Dean says, planning in the back of his mind. He can keep the demon talking, wait for Sam to get back from dropping Kevin off at Garth’s latest safe house. “Couple months back. Fun day.”

“Of course, that’s here too,” says the demon, tapping the side of Cas’s head with a knife Dean hadn’t noticed was in his hand earlier. “Blue-eyed bitch from paradise.”

“Her name was Naomi,” Dean says, no idea where the sudden surge of respect for the dead angel comes from. Maybe because in the end, she’d been right. Or maybe because hatred is a fickle thing, and he just hates whoever’s hurting Cas in the moment more than anyone who’s hurt him before.

“Stupid name.” Dean swears he can smell sulfur as the demon starts toward him, eyes raking him up and down like he’s working out a complicated Jenga move. “It’s funny,” he comments, “how much he thinks of you. ‘Dean is so brave’. ‘Dean is so strong.’” He laughs, a mad cackle. “And yet here you are, strung up like a pig about to be gutted.”

“You know, I appreciate the sweet talk, I really do,” Dean scoffs in a brittle voice, “but anytime you wanna cut to the action s’fine with me.”

“I don’t think you understand,” says the demon possessing Castiel. “How many times have these hands put you together? How hard do you think it can be for them to tear you apart?”

For a second, Dean drops the bravado and musters out, “Cas won’t let you.”

“Agree to disagree,” the demon says, and sketches out a long bloody line down the side of Dean’s abdomen with the tip of the knife.

* * *

Minutes pass, agonizing minutes, minutes that feel like hours, and Castiel’s trench grows spotted and splashed with Dean’s blood. The demon’s carving is methodical, slow, and he reacts gleefully to every mark. Occasionally he leans up towards Dean and taunts him, threatens him, laughs to him about how Cas is screaming in his head. Every time he does, Dean ignores him, shuts his eyes, and murmurs some reassurance to Cas, “It’ll be okay,” or “I’ll get us out of this,” or “Don’t worry, Cas.”

Eventually the demon gets bored with the knife and reaches for a syringe. ( _Where the hell is he getting all this crap, and where the hell is Sam?_ Dean wonders.) As he rolls back a sleeve of the coat and begins to draw blood from Cas’s forearm, Dean stiffens against the wall. “See,” the demon explains, focusing on the needle, “you give this stuff to Sammy, it makes him big and strong. You, on the other hand…” With a wicked smile, he jabs the needle into Dean’s arm, right where the mark of Castiel’s handprint had been.

It’s like fire. Fire, and poison, and pain wrapping around his veins like vines, white hot and coursing through his body. He wants to scream, or beg, or both, but all he does is bite his tongue and then grit his teeth and then huff out, “Is that the best you can do? Is it? Is that…” But his resolve fails, he cries out, “ _Cas_ , please…”

The demon laughs his maniacal laugh, and Cas’s blue eyes are rimmed with black. “Maybe that worked when he was an angel, but _Cas_ is nothing now. He’s weak.”

“You’re wrong,” Dean pants, raw and scraped open like a wound. “You’re wrong, he’s not, he’s the strongest- strongest…”

“Strongest what, Dean?” His name sounds like metal grinding against metal, spit out between Cas’s teeth in the demon’s voice. “Angel, human, _god_? Do you even know what he is anymore?”

“He’s family,” says Dean in a small voice. If there was a time when he wanted to put on a tough face for the bastard torturing him, it’s forgotten now. Now, there’s only Cas, Cas who’s saddled with a demon and probably feeling scared and alone, Cas who needs him. “Cas. Cas, you’re my family. You know that?”

“You’re pathetic. You know that?” The demon cuts a distorted smiley face over Dean’s chest. “What do you even care about this walking corpse for? As a human, he’s _useless_.”

“That’s not true,” Dean says, then, louder, “Cas, don’t you dare believe him. You’re not useless, and I don’t care about the angel stuff or the magic powers or whatever. It’s not about that, it never was, and next to Sammy, you matter more than anybody, so don’t you _dare_ believe him.” It sounds too much like an epitaph, and as it’s occurring to Dean that he should really say these things at times when Castiel is _not_ being possessed or controlled or torn apart inside, the demon backhands him, snapping his head back against the wall. Spitting blood, he chokes out in a whisper, “Need you.”

“Oh, that whole debacle,” the demon sighs. “I doubt he’ll respond to that _now_. Castiel is broken. It’s doubtful he can even survive what I-”

“ _No_ ,” Dean grinds out, eyes cast downward. Wildly, he jerks his head upward to meet the demon’s gaze. “You son of a bitch. You let him live. Do whatever you want to me, but _Cas walks away_. I don’t care if you kill me, but if you don’t let him live I swear, I’m coming back and making you wish you’d stayed downstairs. Got it?”

For a moment, he thinks he sees a spark of real fear in the demon’s eyes, some recognition that Dean Winchester was once Alistair’s best student, and then he backs up, shrinks in on himself, hands flying up to cover his face, and it hits Dean that the spark he’d seen wasn’t fear. And it wasn’t the demon’s.

“Cas?” he whispers, tentatively, and oh God, Cas is _crying_ , actually crying there in the middle of the dungeon in broken, hitched breaths. “Cas, can you- is that…” He’s losing too much blood and the demon blood from the injection is screaming through his bloodstream, but the thought that Cas could maybe be okay blocks out all the pain.

When he realizes that Cas is sobbing out the beginning of an Enochian exorcism, unable to say the rest through the tears, Dean rattles off the same chant he’s been using since he was eight years old. The demon wrenches itself from Cas’s mouth and spirals away, below, back, and Dean breathes a shaky sigh of relief as Cas regains his footing.

A moment later, they can hear the unmistakable sounds of Sam getting back and stomping through the bunker, and that’s when Cas starts screaming.

* * *

“So you’re saying the demon just walked in, trussed you up and abused you for half an hour, and then walked out?” Sam recounts, worry knotted in his brow, careful fingers stitching up a nasty cut on Dean’s shoulder.

“And then Cas showed up,” Dean adds, leaning back against the towels clotted behind his head. An array of medical supplies sits spread out on the table beside his bed, and Sam’s working steadfastly to keep Dean from losing any more blood.

“Yeah, I’m not buying it.” Dean rolls his eyes, beginning to feel a bit hazy from the pain medication. “I think it happened a little different.”

“Well, you think of it how you want to think of it,” Dean says, wincing a little at the suture needle. “But Cas did nothing to me. That’s the important part.” Cas happens to walk in right then, looking lost and shuddering a little in the coat that’s still covered in Dean’s blood.

“Dean,” he says, and it sounds like a plea. “In the past, you’ve- you’ve seemed upset when I left without telling you. So… I’m telling you right now. I’m leaving.” With a dejected little sigh, he begins to walk away.

“Cas!” Dean calls, jerking upward, restrained by Sam’s hand on his shoulder. “Ow, Jesus- Cas, come back here.” The once-angel slumps back into the room, looking as if he might fall down and die right then. “Sammy, I’m not gonna die if you hold off on patching me up for like five minutes, right?” When Sam says nothing but gives him one of his classic sour expressions, Dean grins a little and shoos him from the room. “Cas, get over here.”

Though he seems like he’ll regret it, Cas switches places with Sam and, while the younger Winchester sulks out of the room, he leans down and inspects Dean, pained and upset. Carefully placing a hand over Dean’s face where tiny red semicircles show the marks the demon made when he clawed at Dean’s cheek, he mumbles, “I can’t heal you.”

“Don’t need you to,” Dean answers. “You know I meant all that stuff I said back there, right? ’Bout not caring about your magic powers?” Cas nods. “It’s _you_. I need _you_. I want _you_ around, not just your grace or your wings or whatever.”

Cas nods again, then asks, “ _Why_?”

“Because I’m in love with you, idiot.” When Cas’s eyes widen, Dean freezes. “Shit. Was that out loud? That wasn’t supposed to be out loud. Damn pain meds.” Cas just smiles down at him, something in his eyes showing the triumphant feel of weathering a storm. “I didn’t just say that.”

Cas leans down and presses his lips to Dean’s, somehow soft while still carrying a contained fury and fierce protectiveness. “And I didn’t just do that.”

“Wow,” Dean mumbles. “Either you’re smooth as hell or I’m stoned as hell.”

“Or both,” Cas says, a smile tugging at his mouth but vanishing when he notices again the bleeding marks crisscrossing Dean’s stomach, chest, and arms. Seeing this, Dean grabs his hand.

“I like both,” he says.

“It’s weird,” Cas branches off. “Being human. I mean, I expected it to hurt. And it does. When that… _thing_ in me was… was hurting you, I felt myself pulled apart. But the relief, afterward… when you were okay…” He exhales, holding Dean’s hand tighter. “Is it blasphemous to be _happy_ , in some small way? About any of it? About what you just said?”

“You mean what I just didn’t say?” Dean quips, smiling a little. “Maybe,” he allows. “Maybe it’s blasphemous. Maybe it’s not. But you know what?” he adds, pulling Castiel by his tie down towards him. “I don’t care.” And he kisses Cas in a way that can’t possibly be healthy for the fallen angel’s fragile homeostasis.  


End file.
